A Shepherd's Morning

During harvest one morning around 7 am, I was in the office and Dan called me outside.  "Uh huh," I responded lethargically.  "No, really! " he called.  "You've got to see this!"

From outside the wine barn we watched in amazement as a flock of sheep trotted down Vineyard Drive.  They were almost 10 deep across the road.  Men strolled behind them, whistling and swinging their jackets; border collies barked happily, dashing back and forth and keeping the sheep from straying off the pavement.  Some of the sheep wore bells and we could hear their languid clanking as the sheep, most white-faced, some black-faced, trotted obediently down the road. 

There were hundreds of them.  Finally, the flock seemed to pass, and we could see open road.  There was a pause, and just when we thought the show was over, another flock trotted quickly past with its attendant shepherds and collies.  After several more awestruck moments and several hundred more sheep, we saw a car with its hazard lights on following the flocks slowly down the road, and a few patient pickup trucks following behind.